The Winter Sea

She’d looked at herself with a sigh, having hoped her reflection would show something more than the road-weary waif who sighed back at her, bright curls disheveled and darkened by dust, pale eyes reddened and circled by shadows of sleeplessness. Turning, she’d washed in the basin, though it had been no use. Her reflection, while cleaner, had looked no less pitiful.

She had sought solace in sleep.

In the morning she had breakfasted, and after that the Duke of Hamilton himself had come to see her. She had found him very charming, as his reputation promised. In his youth, so it was said, he’d cut a dashing, gallant figure at the Court. In middle age, he had grown slacker in the contours of his face, perhaps, and less firm round his middle, but he had not lost the gallantry. He’d bowed, his dark wig spilling past his shoulders in its fashionable curls, and he had kissed her hand as though she had been equal to his rank.

‘So you are stranded in my care, it seems,’ he’d said. ‘I am afraid your kinsman is quite seriously ill, with fits of fever. I have seen him lodged as comfortably as possible, and found a nurse to tend him, but he will not be able to ride for some time.’

‘Oh, I see.’ She had lowered her head, disappointed.

‘You find these apartments so lacking in comfort that you wish to be gone?’ He’d been teasing, of course, but his voice had held true curiosity at her reaction.

‘Oh, no, it is not that, Your Grace. ’Tis only…’ But she could not name the cause herself, except that she wanted to be at the end of her journey, and not in its middle. She did not know the woman she was going to, the woman who was not her own relation, but that of her uncle’s by marriage. A woman of power and property, who had been somehow moved by providence, upon that uncle’s recent death, to write and say that she would take Sophia in and offer her a home.

A home. The word had beckoned to her then, as it did now.

‘’Tis only,’ she said, faltering, ‘that I will be expected in the north.’

The duke examined her a moment, then he said, ‘Pray, sit.’

She sat, uncomfortably, on the narrow settee by the window, while he took the velvet chair opposite, watching her still with a curious look. ‘You go to the Countess of Erroll, I’m told. To Slains castle.’

‘I do, sir.’

‘And what is your connection to that remarkable lady?’

‘She was kin to my uncle, John Drummond.’

A nod. ‘But you are not a Drummond.’

‘No, sir. My own name is Paterson. It was my aunt who married to the Drummonds. I have lived with them these eight years, since my parents died.’

‘Died how?’

‘They were both taken by the flux, Your Grace, while voyaging to Darien.’

‘To Darien!’ He spoke it like a hammer’s blow. He had, she knew, been one of the most ardent of supporters of the Scottish dream to found a New World colony poised on the spit of land between the North and South Americas. So many had put faith in it, and poured their wealth into the venture, trusting it would give the Scots control of both the seas—a route to India that none could rival, cargoes being carried overland across the isthmus from the one sea to the other, bringing riches that would see the country rise to untold power.

Her father had believed the dream, had sold all he possessed to buy a passage on the first brave voyage. But the golden dream had turned a nightmare. Both the English and the Spanish had opposed the Scottish settlement at Darien, and nothing there remained except the natives and the empty huts of those who would have built themselves an empire.

The Duke of Hamilton had been outspoken in condemning those who’d played a hand in Darien’s undoing, and he looked at her with newfound kindness as he said, ‘It was by God’s grace that you did not travel with them, else you, too, had lost your life.’ He thought a moment. ‘Would you then be kin to William Paterson?’

The merchant and adventurer who first had dreamed of Darien, and who had set its fateful wheel in motion.

She said, ‘I believe he is a distant cousin, but we have not met.’

‘That is, perhaps, as well for you.’ He smiled, and settled back to think. ‘So you would travel north to Slains?’

She had glanced at him, not daring yet to hope…

‘You will have need of one to guide you, and protect you from the perils of the road,’ he had continued, still in thought. ‘I have a man in mind who might be like to suit your purpose, if you are content to trust my judgment.’

She had asked, ‘Who is the man, Your Grace?’

‘A priest, named Mr Hall. He knows the way to Slains, he has been there on my behalf before. And you would have no cause for fear,’ he’d told her, ‘in his company.’

No cause for fear. No cause for fear.

She slipped again upon the horse, and Mr Hall stretched out a hand to right her in the saddle. ‘We are here,’ he said, encouraging. ‘I see the lights of Slains ahead.’

She shook herself awake and looked, eyes strained against the evening mists that swirled upon the barren lands around them. She could see the lights as well—small dots of yellow burning in the blackened spears of turrets, and unyielding walls. Below, unseen, she heard the North Sea raging on the rocks, and closer by, a dog began to bark a sharp alarm, unwelcoming.

But when she would have held her horse back, hesitant, a door swung wide and light spilled warm across the roughened turf. A woman came towards them, in a widow’s gown of mourning. She was not young, but she was handsome, and she walked towards them hatless, without shawl or cloak, and heedless of the damp.